Organizational discourse as a social defense: Taming the tiger of electronic government

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role of discourse as a means of conferring identity and reducing task-related anxiety. Seeing discourse in this essentially defensive light leads to a new perspective on resistance to organizational change, portraying it as a threat to the defense structure of established discourses. To illustrate, the nascent discourse of electronic government will be examined. Although a potent new discourse, e-government clashes strongly with the discursively embedded social defense systems of local government. A case study is reported in a UK local authority. Drawing on actor network theory, it is shown how the hegemonic influence of the social defenses translated the radical rhetoric of e-government into an operational discourse that was bland and unthreatening. © 2003 by Springer Science+Business Media New York.